How to write a P.h.D proposal in Computer Science A Complete Guide

How to write a PhD Proposal in Computer Science is one of the main concern of every master’s student who is looking forward for the scholarship. Computer Science is a very vast field. There are many topics which are now becoming part of research in recent years. Human Computer Interaction a few years back have no concept of research. Now it has become a hot topic in Computer Sciences. Other options for a student to select a domain includes:

Machine Learning

Software engineering

Networks

Information Retrieval

Internet of Things (IOT)

Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

Algorithm designs

Formal Methods

Big Data

Semantic Webs

Data mining

You can choose any topic from all the fields mentioned above. Keep in mind the subjects are particular to a domain. There are many other sub topics inside them. For example, Machine Learning can be used in many research topics such as

Sentimental analysis

Big data processing

Robotics

So you need to explore further for a particular topic to start work. P.h.D proposal in computer science is not a very difficult job. You need to follow a pattern to start writing. If you have basic writing skills and little knowledge of research methodologies than you can write your research proposal within a week.

In the article, we are going to guide students, how to write a meaningful research proposal in computer science.

First of all, pick a topic from the domains mentioned above. Then explore “Google Scholars”, “IEEE Library” for recent papers in that area. You need to collect least 10 to 15 articles. Papers from reputed journals and international conferences should be selected. If it is 2017, then you need to gather papers from 2013 to 2017. This will give you clear directions in which domains researchers are working.

How to select Problem Statement:

Once you have downloaded recent papers, read their abstracts and methodology section. There are some key points to find research gap in every research article.

Most of the research article conclusion section mention future directions for research.

From methodology, you have clear idea how the author has collected results, either it is a simulation based article or any other text analysis paper, his results may be not so efficient. The methodology he/she adopted may create problems towards efficiency. So increasing efficiency in your proposal is a research gap. For example, he used WEKA which contains different algorithms for data mining tasks; there are other tools available such as KEEL. So increasing efficiency using different tool is still a research gap.

There is another option for researchers to modify the existing algorithms available in different tools. Consider an example of Machine Learning algorithms. You can edit using Python to increase the efficiency and performance.

These are some simple tricks to find your problem statement to get started to write his P.h.D proposal. Once you have decided which topic need improvements, then follow below guide line to complete your project.

P.h.D proposal for Computer Science Students:

We will start with a case study. We have selected sentimental analysis a topic in machine learning for the classification of textual data for the purpose listed above. Let start searching in Google Scholars and IEEE research library. I have only typed word “Sentimental analysis in Google Scholars”. Now it’s time to pick an idea from the results shown by Google.

Just typing the keyword, we have following subtopics in which researchers are working. You can find these suggestions at the bottom of the page. These can be further explored to find the research gap to find your goal. In the second image below, we have underlined some domains in which sentimental analysis or opinion mining is useful. We have selected some papers to get an idea; there are hundreds and thousands of research article available. Our primary aim is to give you tips to pick your topic for the proposal.

In the first paper selected keyword is education. There are many ways to find educational research gap. Some hot topics in education include:

E-Learning trends, there are different opinions of people for the topic

Human Computer Interaction using video conferencing

Improvements of education in Public universities through survey

Career Counseling

Local vs. Foreign education differences

In the second paper, the word good and bad highlighted. Many researchers are working on binary classifications of users opinions on products for example. To know the market trends companies used twitter opinion to improve quality. A mobile company, a car company, restaurants, a laptop company or any other electronics whom companies are interested in taking quick user response social network opinions solve their problems.

In the third paper, the word survey has much more important than the ideas discussed before. Most of the recent research on the topic has presented in surveys paper. They also contain all the different methodologies adopted by various scholars.

In the fourth paper, Social Media has been used for various research activities. Efforts have been made to collect data from social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for research purposes. Most of the work is based on the prediction by text data posted by millions of people each day. There are many ideas available in this field such as:

Predicting cricket match outcomes using opinions of different people from official pages of national teams

Predict election results by users opinion, in this research binary classifications is used, Positive and Negative tweets

Prediction of Hate Speeches on a specific video which is spreading controversies among people

Controversial news detections on Twitter

Classifications of users tweets into their respective categories such as sports, entertainment, movies etc.

Comparison of algorithm available for textual classifications

Detection of disease in a specific area by users tweets, which contains some signs of symptoms.

Moreover, There is tremendous scope in this field to get started. This is just a single sub topic of machine learning which we have discussed. Now you get familiar how to find your problem statement. It’s time to start writing.

P.h.D Proposal Guideline step by step Tips:

Below is sample sketch of PhD proposal. We have highlighted some key points in the below format.

First of all, your research proposal title must be on the top of the page

Secondly, start writing with numbering as shown in the figure, Introduction should discuss all the related terminologies which you are going to used in your research project. In our case problem is related to social network, so we have divided our introduction into the following section

Internet

Internet benefits

Social Networks

Social Network benefits

Opinion Mining

Natural Language Processing

Algorithms used

Write at least one paragraph of each section, and at the end, write at least two to three lines describing what you are going to do.

Literature review must match with your problem statements, and it means if you are writing about social network analysis, then literature isn’t about E-Learning sentiments. Therefore try to find the papers which have a similar impact on your overall problem statements.

Since, methodology changes with the passage of time, when you start doing your project, so don’t worry about this section. Just give some rough sketch how you will achieve your goals. Try to write methodology in steps. This is good practice. In methodology section tries to give your blog diagram, this sounds good for a reader to understand.

The reference goes at the end of the paper. Inaddition, your proposal must have at-least 20 to 30 references. Reputed journals and conferences should be given preferences to local journal and local conferences. It is also good practice to provide references in sequential pattern and according to year the research paper published. This isn’t mandatory, but it will give extra points to your proposal.